All right, this is finally something I have wanted to talk about for a while. I grew up in the US in the-other-South in one of those interim Protestant marginally pro-zionist households with a church and family that was trending toward MAGA evangelical Christianity and all that entails. As a young geography nerd(geography bee school champion in the 5th grade nbd nbd) I might have been more clued into this stuff than I should have been which is why I even asked my family about Israel in the first place. These fully grown adults told me that the Israelis in Israel were the same Israelis that we read about in the Bible in church and Sunday school every week. Forgive me, but lying to children is bad. And a sin, if you believe in that sort of thing. Matthew 18:6

I think it is worth dissecting the lie and to contextualize where it came from. Otherwise, we will wind up confused, like our dear President Lolita Express. What you are hearing from Bill here is the lie that US Christians have been telling themselves for the past 50 years to protect their white supremacy and commit and contribute to genocide without ever having to feel bad or reflect on it.

My grandfather served in the US military during WWII, but didn't go overseas. When I knew him he couldn't get enough of the History Channel WWII docs. He once got mad at a Sikh person for wearing a turban on Wheel of Fortune and immediately became irate that Pat Sajak would allow a Muslim person on his favorite game show, like 8 years after 9/11.

We wouldn't really talk about Israel or Jewish people in our household or church but what we did talk about was Jesus' apocalyptic return to the Holy Land. This is the pre-internet 90s, everything I know comes from the people around me. And these people, my family, told frightening stories. What I knew about Jewish people is that they were going to hell for not being Christian, same with the Mormons and the JWs and everyone else.

My aunt was addicted to those Left Behind novels, we watched the movie Tribulation with Gary Busey half a dozen times. In our household, the End Times were upon us, imminently. But in the meantime, our church began bringing in wackier and wackier speakers, evolution and stem cell therapies were a hot topic for denouncement from the pulpit every Sunday. And we celebrated sending missionaries to Ukraine(true story). As it turns out, it was always just about white supremacy, our city landmark church had been a meeting place for the KKK in the 50s, and in the 80s my grandmother had led the movement to resegregate the black and white Baptist congregations in our city, which was successful as I don't think I ever saw a black person in that church. One of the Republican state senators who wrote my state's anti-trans 'bathroom bill' was a prominent member there.

This is all to say that I had no idea what a Palestinian was until maybe 2010. I've learned a lot since then.